Rapidshare Hires Entire Lobbying Firm to Fight the RIAA/MPAA in the US

RapidShare has hired an entire lobbying firm to fight its cause in the US. RapidShare was accused of promoting and allowing illegal file sharing. The charges were laid by the RIAA/MPAA and the lobbying firm will defend RapidShare’s case in the US. RapidShare servers are based in Germany while the headquarters are in Switzerland. This has made it hard for the RIAA to issues a takedown notice. In addition, RapidShare has much to lose from a takedown.

The RIAA has rightfully accused RapidShare of illegally hosting digital media, especially pre-released television series and movies. The accusations have even listed these illegal downloads as the main source of traffic for these file-sharing websites like RapidShare.

The lobbying firm RapidShare hired is proving to be useful. It has already presented a comparison of RapidShare and Google. RapidShare is ready to impose filtering of content. However, even this filtering will not guarantee that the RIAA declares RapidShare innocent and leaves it alone. The RIAA gets financial backings, which amount to more than $1.8 million as that is just the amount the reportedly spent last quarter. Doing the math, we can well estimate the pressure it puts upon its law firms.

An interesting thing to watch in this case will be how seriously RIAA takes the Google-RapidShare analogy. It will possibly play a key role in deciding RIAAs next move.